HE Victorian sugar baron Abram Lyle famously declared that he’d rather see his son brought home dead than drunk. It’s an extreme position, certainly, but I have a certain respect for Abram Lyle. He wasn’t afraid of speaking his mind, in Greenock where he lived, or anywhere else. And his mind was full of weird things and obscure tracts. He knew his Bible, including the parts that, for some unfathomable reason, we never get to hear in church. He knew, for instance, the story of Samson inside out, a story we learned greedily at primary school and which
The taming of the Lyle lion
Mar 06, 2024
3 minutes
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